1. Field
The present disclosure is directed to a method and apparatus for transferring media data between devices. More particularly, the present disclosure is directed to transferring media data or protected data from one device to a memory of another device using a transfer protocol.
2. Introduction
Presently, devices can synchronize with other devices to transfer media data between the devices. For example, a portable media player using a media synchronization application can connect with a personal computer media player to synchronize media, such as music, videos, and other data between the devices. Unfortunately, the synchronization may take a considerable amount of time to transfer the media data depending on the amount of media data that is transferred between the devices. The synchronization may also incur additional delays due to the transfer speed of the connection and media transfer overhead involved in the transfer. As media transfer time is minimized due to faster connection transfer speeds, media transfer overhead can become the dominant component of the transfer time, and thus can become a limiting factor to how fast media can be transferred between devices. This media transfer overhead can include setup data and commands, control data and commands, metadata of the media, and other media transfer overhead. Thus, future improvements to media synchronization must consider overhead reduction for improved efficiency.
For example, there are several digital rights management-aware data transfer protocols, a.k.a. media data transfer protocols (MDTP), that can be used to transfer large amounts of media data between a host personal computer and a media player device. Different media players and different personal computers may use different digital rights management-aware transfer protocols. Devices, systems, and programs that use different digital rights management-aware transfer protocols can include iPods, Zunes, Music On Demand, iTunes, Windows Media Player, Media Transfer Protocol, Packet Video application, and other devices, systems, and programs. Due to concerns from media service providers over possible digital rights management violations, different media service providers require users to use different devices and/or different applications on the devices to be able to limit access to media, such as music and video services. As a result of such concerns over digital rights management violations, some media service providers require all the media data must be copied from a source device into memory on the destination device using only a specific media synchronization application. This requirement creates a throughput bottleneck in the media synchronization application, which limits overall system data throughput. As a result, a user's experience suffers due to enormously long media synchronization times.
Thus, there is a need for an improved method and apparatus for transferring media data between devices.